I am wondering what kind of food is served on retreats where you go and if anyone has cooked on a retreat if they have any recipies they would like to share which were popular? also what kind of food is allowed in the Eight Preceptors or a monks Diet after noon, and before Noon?

where I go it is all Vegitarian, and mainly Thai Style Food although I have not found out what any of it is called to try to make it myself!

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill

The Goenka vipassana course I went on turned me into a fan of porridge. Their porridge was delicious, but I'm since made an abridged/simplified version of it, which according to my son is the best porridge in the world.

Most of the vipassana retreats I've been involved with have been in Australia though some in India and NZ where there have been some variations on the menu items.In Australia, I think there is a common cookbook for the SN Goenka retreat centres. I was the kitchen manager on one course about 20 years ago. Breakfast - as Retro has said - is characterised by porridge with muesli, stewed fruit & yogurt on the side and toast and its multifarious breakfast condiments and access to a variety of herbal and black tea. The lunch menu changes nearly everyday on a 10-day course. From memory, some of the dishes include stir-fry vegetables and tofu with ginger and soy with brown rice, mild curry with raita and dahl, lasagne, baked vegetables. Every day a salad is also offered. Every second or third day a desert is also offered in the form of home-made 'anzac'-style biscuits (rolled oats, sultanas, sugar), carob balls, something similar to sticky date pudding with custard.

Most of the 'new students' go nuts over the food and most 10-day courses I've sat I've witnessed students on the last day requesting recipes. Personally, I think its due to nine-days of noble silence, 12+ hours meditation per day and the absence of any other sensory pleasure that distorts the perception that the quality of the food is spectacular. The more courses I do, the more I am revolted by the food and the less of it I eat!

If I were to design a menu for a retreat, I would keep the menu nutritious but simple. I'm a believer in ensuring that the food doesn't become a pre-occupation for the participants.Cheers

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion … ...He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.John Stuart Mill